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Available from
ontos verlag Frankfurt, Germany and online bookstores such as
Amazon under the title
Social Ontology : Recasting Political Philosophy
Through a Phenomenology of Whoness 2008 Hardback xiv + 688 pp. ISBN
978-3-938793-78-7 and as an e-book from
ontoslink. Also at
Google Book Search where extensive parts can be read. A second
revised, emended and extended
e-book edition, Version 2.1, July 2011, 785 pp. is available.
Freedom,
value, power, justice, government, legitimacy are major themes of this
inquiry. It explores the ontological structure of human beings associating
with one another, the basic phenomenon of society. We human beings strive
to become who we are in an ongoing power interplay with each other. Thinkers
called as witnesses include Plato, Aristotle, Anaximander, Protagoras,
Hobbes, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Adam Smith, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Heidegger, Schumpeter, Hayek, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger,
et al.
"Classical liberalism
has neglected the ontological structure of the interplay of powers in the
practical realm of a plurality of wills, and thus the ontological problematic
of esteem, estimation, evaluation, validation, recognition, etc. among
both human beings and things. In short, ... it is ontologically blind
to the phenomenon of whoness. Instead it has imagined the free individual
as a subject without a social world, and then tried to derive society from
a bunch of atomistic individuals." Chapter 12 i)
"This is a fine study
that ought to belong in any library collection that supports advanced work
in social and political theory." Roderick M. Stewart, Philosophy Department,
Austin College,Texas.
To find out what
the book is not about, read the uncomprehending repudiation
in apl. Prof. Dr. Dr. Heinz-Gerd Schmitz's review in Philosophisches
Jahrbuch ISSN 00318183
Vol.
116 No. 1 2009 pp. 228-229.
A superior review
from a decidedly critical Marxist perspective is Tony Smith's in
Science
& Society ISSN 0036-8237
Vol.
74 No. 4 2010 pp. 565-568. See my reply
to Smith.
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